A new F1 season has kicked off, and it’s all change on the track. Fans have to learn a whole new language – it’s goodbye DRS and hello ‘harvest mode’ and ‘super-clipping’ – and there’s even a new team in the shape of Cadillac. Off the track, the role of the pit lane as one of the world’s most-seen showcases for luxury continues with a slew of new designs and the arrival of Breitling to shake things up.
TAG Heuer is the horological title-holder (Official Timekeeper, at least); Richard Mille, the serious flex; and H Moser & Cie offers the left-field alternative. But who are the other watch players in the F1 game?
IWC is tipped to be a podium regular this season, as it has been since 2013 (and was all through the Hamilton glory years), and has two new F1 watches, both of which are collaborations with Mercedes driver George Russell. Based on the Pilot’s Watch 41mm case, there’s a chronograph and an automatic, both cased in black zirconium with matt black dials to match and details picked out in blue – a low-profile scheme that, apparently, reflects Russell's unflappable race persona. Limited editions of 1063 available.
Breitling’s link-up with Aston Martin was announced just in time for the Grand Prix season (and just before the team announced worrying performance concerns around its new cars) and extends from the F1 team through to the production cars. It’s Breitling’s first motorsport adventure on four wheels (the brand partners Triumph motorbikes too) since it teamed up with Bentley for the latter’s 2003 tilt at Le Mans. The Aston partnership is marked with a 43mm B01 Navitimer cased in titanium (surprisingly, a first for the Navitimer) and with a carbon-fibre dial. The watch is being made in a limited edition of 1,959, a reference to Aston Martin’s debut in grand prix racing.
H Moser & Cie’s Streamliner Alpine Drivers and Mechanics Edition may be a rare find, but it lives up to the billing as a watch designed to fulfil the ‘Alpine drivers’ desire for a timepiece as stylish as their single-seaters’. Its sporty feel comes through the blue steel case, the skeleton movement with its V-shaped bridges and wheel rim-style winding rotor. Inside the case, the HMC 700 movement is suitably state-of-the-art too, being a chronograph GMT developed with Agenhor that shows elapsed times from the central axis, removing the need for subdials.
TAG Heuer’s Formula 1 Chronograph is all it should be: technical design, maker steeped in motorsport heritage and high-performance specs. That means a self-winding calibre 16 chronograph, 44mm sandblasted titanium case with DLC-coated buttons, aluminium bezel and red-accented black dial with Super-LumiNova hands and indexes. There’s also a new TAG Heuer Connected that follows the same design cues with a titanium case and carbon-fibre strap.
If you’re looking to blur the line between fan and ‘player’, the answer is Richard Mille, the brand that was born out of motorsport and is a long-term partner of both Ferrari and McLaren. The RM 43-01 Ferrari demonstrates why: it’s a tourbillon with split-seconds chronograph cased Carbon TPT (Richard Mille’s super lightweight and tough ‘thin-ply composite’) with styling details contributed by Ferrari’s design department.